BEKA COOPER – TERRIER!This heroic fantasy novel by the wonderful author Tamora Pierce was my pick for best novel of 2006. I’ve just listened to it again on CD and thoroughly enjoyed it as much the second time around. Pierce is impressively blessed with the gifts of the storyteller and I can't recommend this book highly enough.
In the midieval city of Tortall, the Provost’s Guards – known as Dogs – patrol the slums with a fierce intensity. Orphaned Beka Cooper, 16, is a trainee – a Puppy - in the Provost's Guard.
Beka tells her own story in a journal she keeps from her very first day as a
puppy. In its pages she writes of her days with her training Dogs, the pair who are to teach her what they know of survival on the streets in the city's toughest slum. Both are veterans. Tunstall is an easygoing, funny man who can be a little crazy in a fight. Goodwin is a small, tough woman who is opposed to Beka's presence at the beginning, a hard Dog and a smart one. They take charge when Beka brings them word of two vicious sets of crimes. Like everyone else in Beka's life, her partners find out that once Beka gets a case in her teeth, she hangs onto it like a terrier until it's been solved.
Having spent the first half of her life in Tortall's slums, she is driven by the need to do what is right and see justice done. Paired with Tunstall and Goodwin and aided by her own gifts of magic, Beka learns her job, makes friends with two mages and a thief, and uncovers two serial killers who prey on the poor and unnoticed.
This is the first book in a planned trilogy. I, for one, can’t wait for the second book in the series, Bloodhound, to hit the shelves.
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